Datasets:

Linkseed

/

hacker_news_with_comments

like 4

wastedbrains

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

Currently using rails and like it a lot. I have done some really small sites in rails, but haven't had to deal with scaling or performance yet really. So I will be learning more about those issues in about a month or so when we launch.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 02:52:42 UTC

tx

Is it bad if I don't want to work at a C++/Java startup?

gregwebs

Nobody in their right mind has been coding "memory management" in C++ for the last 10 years. This is not early 90s anymore.Also, if your ability to "accomplish as much as possible" in your life is so severely limited by the programming language s(i.e. tool) you use, then you should probably rethink your approach to engineering.

I have an opportunity to work at a company coming in as employee# < 10. They are doing so well that they are already profitable after a year and trying to keep up with the demand. I think I would really like working there, except that they use C++/Java. I want to accomplish as much as possible in my life, and coding memory management in C++ or otherwise being limited to unexpressive languages just seems to prevent that goal.

2007-07-17 03:56:35 UTC

mynameishere

Aaron Swartz: Announcing the Open Library

abstractbill

The kiss-to-ass ratio on that site is just too, too high."Hey, everyone, I've come up with a completely banal and already-been-done idea."Oh, mmm, mmm, Aaron you're so smart, mmm...SMAAck Kiss!

2007-07-17 03:58:03 UTC

tx

Is it bad if I don't want to work at a C++/Java startup?

gregwebs

Another thought. Just very recently someone posted "Ask Reddit: what is the most beautiful code you've ever seen?"... Knowing how much reddit dudes love LISP, Haskell, Ruby and Python, I was very surprised to see that almost exclusively everyone's favorite piece of code was written... you guessed it - in C.

I have an opportunity to work at a company coming in as employee# < 10. They are doing so well that they are already profitable after a year and trying to keep up with the demand. I think I would really like working there, except that they use C++/Java. I want to accomplish as much as possible in my life, and coding memory management in C++ or otherwise being limited to unexpressive languages just seems to prevent that goal.

2007-07-17 03:59:34 UTC

tx

Is it bad if I don't want to work at a C++/Java startup?

gregwebs

Yet another thought! :-) Since company is so small, you can actually get them to migrate from C++ to D! That would have been awesome...

I have an opportunity to work at a company coming in as employee# < 10. They are doing so well that they are already profitable after a year and trying to keep up with the demand. I think I would really like working there, except that they use C++/Java. I want to accomplish as much as possible in my life, and coding memory management in C++ or otherwise being limited to unexpressive languages just seems to prevent that goal.

2007-07-17 04:00:58 UTC

tx

Lessons for Consumer-Focused Startups (from Accel Venture Partners)

joshwa

Jesus... what's up with reinventing the wheel? Just use a normal HTML, for god's sake: we are people, not printers. I already developed a habit of skipping PDFs while surfing, now I'll need to start avoiding links to scribd.Why work so hard to make your product worse?

2007-07-17 04:02:58 UTC

tx

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

Sure I will - Ruby is a wonderful language that I simply adore. I suspect that over time I will slowly migrate to my own replacements for various Rails parts.Furthermore, there isn't much of "Rails" you have to deal with. What is Rails? Templates? They're more or less the same everywhere. DB access? Databases are dying anyway... What's left? URL mapper? Rails, ASP.NET, Django.. they are all the same to me.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 04:08:28 UTC

jey

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

"Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." -Alan Perlis

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 04:28:07 UTC

jsjenkins168

Michael Tsai: Subversion to Git

nickb

Git looks really cool, but there just isnt enough support yet to make it a viable alternative to SVN, IMHO. Once there is a good Eclipse plug in, Apache extension, etc we may switch over but until then Git looks to be only really be useful to the most hardcore (think Linux kernel developers).

2007-07-17 04:31:59 UTC

sgoraya

Need Good Startup Lawyer Recommendation

gibsonf1

I've been using White & Lee LLP over in Menlo Park - The folks that are working with me have been a pleasure to work with so far - Only negative thing I can say is that they are not always as prompt as I would like

We need to get a lawyer to help us with trademark issues and our company structure. Can anyone recommend a good lawyer in the SF area?PG: I did as many google searches as possible on YC to try to find the lawyer you use for YC companies which I'm pretty sure you mentioned a couple months ago, but to no avail. Which lawyers do you use?

2007-07-17 04:38:03 UTC

smg

The 80-hour Myth (Your best work is in bursts, surrounded by periods of dullness and inactivity)

tomh

There are some programmers who were just born to code. They can put in monster hours everyday as long as they believe that what they are doing is cool. I was lucky to work with one such individual at a previous job. He was just phenomenally productive and he was working way more than 80 hrs a week. He could write device drivers in days and entire file systems in weeks. If you are lucky you might get to observe someone like that. In some ways writing code to people who are good at it is almost an exhilarating and enjoyable experience. It is easy to get into the Flow and then you just loose track of time. Programming is not really a bursty activity. If you are unable to find the flow and immerse yourself in your code for hours at a stretch find another career.

2007-07-17 04:49:40 UTC

staunch

Aaron Swartz: Announcing the Open Library

abstractbill

The hard part of a project like this is dedicating years to building it into something large. The programming challenges are relatively trivial next to the total work involved. I'll believe he's serious about this project if he sticks with it after most of the fun technical challenges are solved.

2007-07-17 06:30:17 UTC

staunch

Michael Tsai: Subversion to Git

nickb

I'm using both on different projects. I've run into some subversion bugs and never had any problems with git so far. I'm a fairly boring user who uses the command line interface and doesn't do anything very tricky. I'm enthusiastically using git for all my new stuff.I definitely think all open source projects should move to distributed revision control, like git, so the commit access problem is eliminated.

2007-07-17 06:46:13 UTC

edawerd

Help me inspire 7th graders.

far33d

My public speaking teacher always drilled into our heads: Know your audience. Thinking back on when I was a 7th grader, I can say for certain that I was never interested in finding a cheap way to innovate, or that I lived in the center of the startup world. Maybe it was just me, but when I was in 7th grade, I was primarily interested in making millions of dollars. Why not mention that you can make tons of money being a hacker (visual: Pictures of successful young founders from Google, Yahoo, YouTube, etc)? There's nothing wrong with that. =) Of course, now that I'm older money is not the reason I enjoy hacking. But it definitely helped me get into it when I was younger.

I've been asked to speak for a group of 7th graders taking a programming class in a Palo Alto school. I want to title my talk - Why You Should Be a Hacker. The rough outline is: 1) Cheapest way to innovate - low barrier to entry, you can build things without having a lab, lots of tools, or anything more than a computer, and building things is FUN!2) You live in the center of the startup world. SV is a special place, and you are lucky to be a part of it already.3) Software will be everywhere (rotary phone evolves into the iPhone) - even if you don't hack professionally, you'll want to know how things actually work. 4) You can wear whatever you want (this is more about hackers being rule-breakers)5) It's all about practice - and you have a big headstart.PG's essays are awesome for someone who already knows they are a hacker to get inspired to do something on their own. I'm hoping to inspire the next generation of YC'ers to start now.Any suggestions?

2007-07-17 06:56:14 UTC

grovemeister

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

"I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues." Can you be a bit more specific? I'm pretty much hooked on rails but if you know python already, checking out django couldn't hurt.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 07:30:39 UTC

zach

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

Hell yes and a half. I love it and people keep doing my work for me (i.e. releasing plugins).I'm a recovering video game programmer who picked up Ruby ages ago as a Perl replacement. But coming from that background, it pained me to see Rails pages that took a third of a second, a half a second or even (gasp) longer to render, but you know, the problems are tractable. You don't have to create sophisticated data structures to address performance problems, for example. And Rails scalability is pretty well-understood and although it's complex, it gets easier all the time.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 07:32:33 UTC

staunch

HBase: A Google Bigtable clone (new opensource project)

toffer

I wonder what the rationale is for not releasing stuff like BigTable and GFS? Yahoo or Microsoft wouldn't want to use it, just because it'd be embarrassing. Are they afraid of helping the startup that will eventually crush them?

2007-07-17 07:40:03 UTC

kingnothing

Find a startup co-founder

rbitar

Hrm.I've been writing notes and thinking about my idea for this exact domain and application name for many months now. Guess I'll have to register and see what you've done.

A site for finding co-founders: http://www.cofoundr.comYou can search members by skills, interests and location or "pitch your idea" to recruit folks.

2007-07-17 07:49:30 UTC

tsuru

Help me inspire 7th graders.

far33d

I currently teach seventh graders in Japan. Many of my students are just starting to learn algebraic concepts and seeing word problems, I would definitely recommend trying to get their interesting from things they do know: video games. Since you mention you are in the vfx industry I wonder if you might be planning a Maya/MEL presentation? I think that would knock their socks off, since you can see the real time changes to the running system without all the compiling, testing. Personally as an attention grabber I would start out with some of your "eye candy" stuff. "Hi, I'm _____ and my job is to make this [kick ass images] happen"One request I have is don't talk as if this is something for those only naturally talented in math and logical thinking. Teachers want them to see potential in themselves to improve, even if they are behind, if they start hitting the books now they can do something like programming.Lay out in no uncertain terms how one might progress if they are interested in the subject. When I was that age, maybe a bit older, there were some fields I was interested in but it was all just pie in the sky kind of stuff to me. Stuff you learned in college. Not connected with the drivel at junior high level.I second the call to not use the word "hacker" RMS lost that battle to Hollywood a long time ago. The kids will find the true meaning to it later. Coder, Programmer, Technical Director (?) are some ideas.

I've been asked to speak for a group of 7th graders taking a programming class in a Palo Alto school. I want to title my talk - Why You Should Be a Hacker. The rough outline is: 1) Cheapest way to innovate - low barrier to entry, you can build things without having a lab, lots of tools, or anything more than a computer, and building things is FUN!2) You live in the center of the startup world. SV is a special place, and you are lucky to be a part of it already.3) Software will be everywhere (rotary phone evolves into the iPhone) - even if you don't hack professionally, you'll want to know how things actually work. 4) You can wear whatever you want (this is more about hackers being rule-breakers)5) It's all about practice - and you have a big headstart.PG's essays are awesome for someone who already knows they are a hacker to get inspired to do something on their own. I'm hoping to inspire the next generation of YC'ers to start now.Any suggestions?

2007-07-17 07:50:13 UTC

gojomo

Aaron Swartz: Announcing the Open Library

abstractbill

Disclosure: I work at the Internet Archive, but only speak for myself here. I can understand the confusion given the news.yc context, but some of these comments miss the point. The Open Library is a library, not a startup, and is hosted at the nonprofit Internet Archive[1]. It is thus more of an analogue to Wikipedia -- which it complements in the books domain -- than Scribd.Entrepreneurial hackers might be interested in the sweep of its mission: catalog every book ever made, using a combination of preexisting data sources and volunteer contributions, and offer free high-quality downloads of full book contents wherever possible. They might be interested in the detailed UI design doc[2], covering the vision for the project's functionality. They might even be interested in the technology: a new loosely-structured dynamically extensible wiki, with integrated full-text search of both catalog entries and book text -- and all open source[3]. - Gordon [1] http://www.archive.org[2] http://demo.openlibrary.org/dev/docs/ui[3] http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/tech http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/architecture

2007-07-17 08:12:13 UTC

fixito

How do you think the internet will be in 5 to 10 years?

edu

once we get high quality speech recognition for videos where transcripts can be made and searched and when bandwidth in the US stops being pathetic and catches up with the rest of the world, then text will take a backseat to video and typical pages will start looking more and more like joost.

How do you think the internet, the web, will be in 5 to 10 years?<p>I've been thinking about it for some weeks now, and I bet for the ubiquitous internet with devices with a certain degree of awareness of their environment. I.e. GPS with traffic reports/weather forecast/any-service, bus stops that broadcast the wait time for the next bus, helper systems for disabled people...<p>

2007-07-17 08:16:42 UTC

JohnN

How do you think the internet will be in 5 to 10 years?

edu

"bus stops that broadcast the wait time for the next bus"We already have that in the UK, though admitedly its not too reliable!

How do you think the internet, the web, will be in 5 to 10 years?<p>I've been thinking about it for some weeks now, and I bet for the ubiquitous internet with devices with a certain degree of awareness of their environment. I.e. GPS with traffic reports/weather forecast/any-service, bus stops that broadcast the wait time for the next bus, helper systems for disabled people...<p>

2007-07-17 08:42:21 UTC

jgamman

Help me inspire 7th graders.

far33d

ask them if they want to change the world. i knew i wanted to try and do something 'big' when i was a kid (not that i had any idea what that was ;-). i went into the physical sciences not programming but even at that age i would have heard if someone had said 'software is changing the world - you can be part of something amazing'. that, combined with access to other people, would have been enough for me to plug into a hacking culture. as it is, i was pretty lonely until i got into post-grad and found other people out there with the same attitudes.

I've been asked to speak for a group of 7th graders taking a programming class in a Palo Alto school. I want to title my talk - Why You Should Be a Hacker. The rough outline is: 1) Cheapest way to innovate - low barrier to entry, you can build things without having a lab, lots of tools, or anything more than a computer, and building things is FUN!2) You live in the center of the startup world. SV is a special place, and you are lucky to be a part of it already.3) Software will be everywhere (rotary phone evolves into the iPhone) - even if you don't hack professionally, you'll want to know how things actually work. 4) You can wear whatever you want (this is more about hackers being rule-breakers)5) It's all about practice - and you have a big headstart.PG's essays are awesome for someone who already knows they are a hacker to get inspired to do something on their own. I'm hoping to inspire the next generation of YC'ers to start now.Any suggestions?

2007-07-17 08:46:16 UTC

neilk

Help me inspire 7th graders.

far33d

Try to find something in their experience that matches the point you're making. Maybe, get them to remember their most favorite class project, or project outside of school. Point out how the best parts of such work might be the freedom, the complete engrossment, the creativity, and the results. Let them in on the secret that this is the way it was meant to be; work is supposed to engage all of your abilities.However, I personally do not believe that every child is born to be a hacker, nor is this the only way to contribute. Your goal might be to reach the 10% of the audience for whom this message makes any sense, and, perhaps to explain that 10% to the other 90%.

I've been asked to speak for a group of 7th graders taking a programming class in a Palo Alto school. I want to title my talk - Why You Should Be a Hacker. The rough outline is: 1) Cheapest way to innovate - low barrier to entry, you can build things without having a lab, lots of tools, or anything more than a computer, and building things is FUN!2) You live in the center of the startup world. SV is a special place, and you are lucky to be a part of it already.3) Software will be everywhere (rotary phone evolves into the iPhone) - even if you don't hack professionally, you'll want to know how things actually work. 4) You can wear whatever you want (this is more about hackers being rule-breakers)5) It's all about practice - and you have a big headstart.PG's essays are awesome for someone who already knows they are a hacker to get inspired to do something on their own. I'm hoping to inspire the next generation of YC'ers to start now.Any suggestions?

2007-07-17 09:09:28 UTC

mattculbreth

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

Yes I would. Probably any smallish consulting gigs I do will be in Rails now, as will any sort of internal quick admin-type app we do for our startup. Rails + ActiveScaffold gets you going very quickly for your standard LOB/CRUD app.For my startup we've chosen Pylons and we're happy so far. It's definitely not as polished as Rails but it gives us a lot more flexibility. We're using SQLAlchemy as well and there's no better way to talk to a database.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 10:01:42 UTC

epi0Bauqu

Getting back to the core

bootload

Kozmo was great while it lasted in Boston. Movie & candy delivery right to Bexley on the cheap! The demand was there at their original low prices--not sure what it would be farther up the demand curve, i.e. if the price was significantly higher. I don't think the $10 minimum would hurt much (students can pool), but the $5 delivery charge might.

"Kozmo started out as a business dedicated to getting consumers what they needed every day," he said. "It morphed form that into being superstore for everything you might possibly want, from books to CDs, and having deliveries as a tack-on. We're going back to the core." ~ http://money.cnn.com/2005/09/14/technology/kozmo_redux/index...Some of the failed dot-com crash-outs from the late 90's had some interesting ideas that might have worked had they stuck with the core of the original idea? Can you think of any others? My case in point is a re-born kozmo as maxdelivery. The difference? (aside from taking $USD230M from VC's) ... * charges for delivery reflect reality ($10 minimum order, and there's a $4.95 delivery charge for orders under $50) * simplifying inventory (focus stays on DVDs, groceries and other daily needs) * no VC's (company isn't beholden to investors who are more focused on growth than profitability) * sticking to favourable geography with high living density of Manhattan NYC (instead of having physical presence in 15 states)Chris Siragusa has obviously learned his lessons the hard way. Do you know of other failed sites that could have been successful getting back to the core?

2007-07-17 11:07:20 UTC

gibsonf1

Case Study: 50% Productivity Increase with Better Quality?

gibsonf1

"We've been using StreamFocus at my architectural firm for the past 6 months, and we are having a dramatic experience: 50% increase in productivity, a large increase in quality, and happier clients and staff with a growing business. This sounds impossible, but it's a fact....."(YC Comments on the link greatly appreciated)

We've been using StreamFocus at my architectural firm for the past 6 months, and we are having a dramatic experience: 50% increase in productivity, a large increase in quality, and happier clients and staff with a growing business. This sounds impossible, but it's a fact....

2007-07-17 13:19:23 UTC

joshwa

New Feature: Ask Marc "Pmarca" Andreesen

staunch

here's a question: where does the "p" in "pmarca" come from?

2007-07-17 13:36:17 UTC

ivankirigin

Michael Tsai: Subversion to Git

nickb

Asking some folks who know about such things in detail, they said this about Git: - Designed specifically to deal with managing the Linux kernel - Not suited for large projects - Reliability of the database is way below acceptable levels.Svn works pretty well.

2007-07-17 13:54:35 UTC

mynameishere

Never Use a Warning When You Mean Undo

danw

Easier said than done. Consider version control, which is, in a sense, one big system for allowing "undos". Just today, I spent an hour struggling with subversion which seems to have a different error for every seeming non-error situation. "Obstructed update", "Item is out-of-date", "Error bumping revisions post-commit (details follow):" [And they DO]Okay, so version control deals with TEXT, but applications deal with internal states that have innumerable interactions. For every one of those crazy subversion errors there are lots of data corruptions that could occur--and once they do, you've stuck your user with something potentially unsolvable through manual intervention.A simple example would be: User deletes event at 3:00 - 3:30. User adds event at 3:00 - 3:30. User undeletes event at 3:00 - 3:30. Fairly easy to resolve, seemingly:1. Undelete selected. 2. Check conflict. 3. [possible actions]: a) Announce conflict. b) Override new event. c) Allow multiple events at same time. (Hmm...was this allowed through normal interractions.) d) Prevent undelete, but allow the user to delete new event....that sort of thing can balloon uncontrollably. Suddenly, for every "undo" you have a tree of options for every possible conflict that may have arrisen from system state changes.No, a better way would be:1) Generic undo selected. 2) New event undone. 3) Generic Undo selected. 4) Old event restored....but then you have a system-wide "version control" system to deal with.

2007-07-17 14:59:01 UTC

mattculbreth

Loopt offers its service to Sprint users

jsjenkins168

Those dudes need to be all over Apple and AT&T to be able to run on the iPhone.

Unfortunately you need to be signed in the read the rest of the article.

2007-07-17 15:00:00 UTC

Agathos

Startup Marketing: Big Bang vs. Darwinian Evolution

brlewis

I think Lamarckian evolution would be a better model here.

2007-07-17 15:10:35 UTC

johnarama

It's no secret: Facebook's allure is its privacy

gibsonf1

I've been reluctant to check out Facebook as me and millions of others have already gone through the trouble of getting a MySpace page up...that being said, private networks are very popular. File-sharing is no exception, and Shalsoft's GigaTribe, http://www.gigatribe.com , is a rapidly growing model for the swapping of large files between a private, encrypted environment of friends...

2007-07-17 15:22:55 UTC

aswanny

New Feature: Ask Marc "Pmarca" Andreesen

staunch

I got a nickname for graham: P Giddy. He strikes me as a happy guy.

2007-07-17 15:27:29 UTC

AF

Aaron Swartz: Announcing the Open Library

abstractbill

I am reminded of similar hyping and grandiose claims that Aaron made when he announced both Infogami and web.py. He eventually abandoned Infogami and the main user of web.py - Reddit, has switched to something else.I really hope he sticks with this. Aaron is a smart guy and it is a shame to see him just leaving behind all these half-finished projects.

2007-07-17 15:31:47 UTC

AF

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

Nope. It is a nice package, but there's too many good frameworks in Python that can give me similar productivity without the performance hit.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 15:33:36 UTC

PindaxDotCom

How do you think the internet will be in 5 to 10 years?

edu

1. Increased bandwidth ... enough bandwidth to make it no longer a factor2. Increased wi-fi coverage ... a free planet-wide wi-fi service?3. Better mobile hardware ... a mobile device that is smaller than a laptop, larger than an iphone, and more useful than either.

How do you think the internet, the web, will be in 5 to 10 years?<p>I've been thinking about it for some weeks now, and I bet for the ubiquitous internet with devices with a certain degree of awareness of their environment. I.e. GPS with traffic reports/weather forecast/any-service, bus stops that broadcast the wait time for the next bus, helper systems for disabled people...<p>

2007-07-17 15:37:26 UTC

msiegel

How do you think the internet will be in 5 to 10 years?

edu

Less Gratuitous Flash, more Information Appliance.

How do you think the internet, the web, will be in 5 to 10 years?<p>I've been thinking about it for some weeks now, and I bet for the ubiquitous internet with devices with a certain degree of awareness of their environment. I.e. GPS with traffic reports/weather forecast/any-service, bus stops that broadcast the wait time for the next bus, helper systems for disabled people...<p>

2007-07-17 15:49:10 UTC

lowesoftware

Never Use a Warning When You Mean Undo

danw

Sounds like an author just picked up the book "The Inmates Are Running The Asylum."-- Alex

2007-07-17 16:22:01 UTC

Zak

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

For a quick, simple app that's primarily used to create, edit and display lists, sure. There are a lot of apps that fit that model. For something more complicated, probably not. I'd certainly consider Ruby, but Rails seems like it would be more of a burden than a help.Note that I've only used Rails to make a couple quick, simple apps that are primarily used to create, edit nad display lists. When I had the opportunity to use it for something more complicated, I went with CL/TBNL/CL-WHO/CLSQL and never looked back.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 16:47:23 UTC

myoung8

How do you think the internet will be in 5 to 10 years?

edu

I've heard some people propose that it will be 3-dimensional. Apparently some government agencies have created their own Intranets in 3D claiming it makes it easier to find stuff (not sure if I believe this or not...). If it's true, though, then I wouldn't be surprised to see it on the consumer web in the near to medium-term future.

How do you think the internet, the web, will be in 5 to 10 years?<p>I've been thinking about it for some weeks now, and I bet for the ubiquitous internet with devices with a certain degree of awareness of their environment. I.e. GPS with traffic reports/weather forecast/any-service, bus stops that broadcast the wait time for the next bus, helper systems for disabled people...<p>

2007-07-17 16:52:14 UTC

far33d

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

It was only a matter of time before maddox hit ycnews.

2007-07-17 17:05:01 UTC

mynameishere

A VC: Facebook Will Sit Tight, As It Should

joshwa

Friendster will also sit tight, until the next firesale.The big advantage of not selling seems to be: If you sell, you have to stop playing the CEO game. Success isn't something you can luck into every time you make a copycat website: Usually they don't take off in a big way.If you cashed out, you'd have cash, but you would stop being a mighty-famous bigshot.

2007-07-17 17:05:27 UTC

euccastro

Get an advantage over your competition by sleeping only 2 hours a day

amichail

For contrast:http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htmhttp://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htmMy uninformed take on this:If you will be depriving yourself of sleep anyway, polyphasic sleep may be worth a try. In this case watch your diet: eat more vegetables and avoid hard to digest foods. It's bad enough that you're abusing your body in one way, and there is a correlation between your diet and your need for sleep. [Edit: I HAVEN'T EVER DONE POLYPHASIC SLEEP SO DON'T TAKE THIS AS ENDORSEMENT.]What I do when I want to squeeze myself is- Avoid caffeine.- Crank until I'm pretty sure I'll fall asleep as soon as I go horizontal.- Sleep without an alarm clock. If I haven't gone wildly out of sync, chances are I'll wake up refreshed without oversleeping.- Take a 20m-ish afternoon nap iff I feel drowsy at that time.And two things I don't do but I'm sure I should:- Do at least 15m exercise early in the morning.- Eat light, varied foods with plenty of vegetables.YMMV!

2007-07-17 17:37:53 UTC

vlad

Loopt offers its service to Sprint users

jsjenkins168

Apparently Boost Mobile is a Nextel subsidiary, and now that Sprint owns Nextel, it explains why Sprint/Nextel is the next logical carrier. This also makes you wonder if AT&T or TMobile would ever support it.

Unfortunately you need to be signed in the read the rest of the article.

2007-07-17 17:59:38 UTC

drusenko

Loopt offers its service to Sprint users

jsjenkins168

when can i get this? been waiting for a while for this announcement...

Unfortunately you need to be signed in the read the rest of the article.

2007-07-17 18:17:25 UTC

twism

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

i kind of agree... i wouldnt trade my Nokia E61 for an iphone

2007-07-17 18:22:24 UTC

pg

Rent-A-Troll

Alex3917

This isn't just about politics. If hired human comment spammers become prevalent, it could change the way comment forums work.

2007-07-17 18:40:51 UTC

patrickg-zill

Rent-A-Troll

Alex3917

Just a note, Kos himself got paid $3K a month by the Howard Dean campaign for at least 4 months, along with getting a bunch of other goodies. Recently JetBlue sponsored some kind of Kos event. (See http://www.slate.com/id/2112314 - published in 2005 as a source on Kos.)

2007-07-17 19:21:53 UTC

mynameishere

Rent-A-Troll

Alex3917

The word "troll" actually goes way back. The artform is actually a bit more dignified than people think now. The first "troll" was supposedly Jonathon Swift with his "Modest Proposal" pamphlet (the title was posthumous by several hundred years, of course). The basic idea was: You start off by being reasonable, getting people to believe you, and then become more and more extreme until the point of ridiculousness.Now, troll means: Someone who goes and makes obvious, inflammatory statements trying to start arguments.Often, "Troll" as used means: Someone who disagrees with the general consensus. That's a dangerous definition.Kos seems to think that a paid political agitator (another old trade) is also a "troll" when on the internet. Not so.

2007-07-17 19:27:35 UTC

ivankirigin

Justin.tv on a larger scale in the UK: helmet-cams to be deployed for police.

ivankirigin

There are some interesting notes about when and how the cameras can be turned on.As a general note, having done work in automated surveillance, most people are too upset of the level of UK surveillance. The current system is not automated, meaning that humans need to watch the 4 million feeds. But expert humans miss 95% of events after 20 minutes from a single feed. Imagine how that decays for many cameras per operator.I would love all public officials to wear these cameras. They would need to be on all the time, outside private spaces or security clearance requirements. It should be internet accessible and searchable, with auto-tagging tools for date, gps location, and eventually content.

There are some interesting notes about when and how the cameras can be turned on.As a general note, having done work in automated surveillance, most people are too upset of the level of UK surveillance. The current system is not automated, meaning that humans need to watch the 4 million feeds. But expert humans miss 95% of events after 20 minutes from a single feed. Imagine how that decays for many cameras per operator.I would love all public officials to wear these cameras. They would need to be on all the time, outside private spaces or security clearance requirements.

2007-07-17 19:46:32 UTC

msiegel

Web 2.0 Company Name Generator (actually not bad)

joshwa

That's hilarious, thanks for the much-needed comic relief. :)

2007-07-17 19:47:48 UTC

amichail

Using human computation games to promote your startup

amichail

You might want to check up on (pending) human computation patents before trying this out though.

2007-07-17 19:48:01 UTC

horatio05

Paul Kedrosky: Online Video Explodes Some More

pg

If video is exploding then why can't I get my self made music videos viewed!!!??? Maybe because I need to make them more like this... (Warning: Maybe NSFW)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dq6o_NT-IU

2007-07-17 20:06:35 UTC

henryw

Exploring Design: Outstanding Start Pages

dawie

These Flash interfaces are awesome. Anyone here got any advice on starting to learn Flash to design these kinds of interfaces?

2007-07-17 20:36:24 UTC

zurla

Web 2.0 Company Name Generator (actually not bad)

joshwa

most of the names i was getting were already taken

2007-07-17 21:11:17 UTC

geebee

Is it bad if I don't want to work at a C++/Java startup?

gregwebs

I know I'm chiming in very late here. The original post asked if it is "bad if I don't want to work at a C++/Java startup."Of course not. This thread has turned it around a bit - phrasing the question as if you wanted to work for a C++/Java startup (or at least if you felt neutral about it).I'm not surprised that's what's being discussed, because those are the more interesting questions. But if you feel in your gut that you don't want to work in C++ or Java, then for god's sake man, don't do it. You'll be really unhappy, and I'm sure you'll have other opportunities.

I have an opportunity to work at a company coming in as employee# < 10. They are doing so well that they are already profitable after a year and trying to keep up with the demand. I think I would really like working there, except that they use C++/Java. I want to accomplish as much as possible in my life, and coding memory management in C++ or otherwise being limited to unexpressive languages just seems to prevent that goal.

2007-07-17 21:14:19 UTC

sbraford

The Startup Game: Why a major angel investor is backing online games

dawie

I've heard some pretty heavy hitters are jumping into web-based MMORPGs big time.Expect to see some YC apps this fall based around games. Speaking of which, are there any YC game startups? (can't remember offhand)

2007-07-17 21:40:43 UTC

horatio05

Loopt offers its service to Sprint users

jsjenkins168

Will the "Business Version" Iphone have GPS? With their "buddy buddy" relationship with Google you'd think this would be a must.

Unfortunately you need to be signed in the read the rest of the article.

2007-07-17 21:49:32 UTC

horatio05

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

If the Nokia E70 were a person. It would be Chuck Norris.

2007-07-17 21:51:33 UTC

adamdoupe

Exploring Design: Outstanding Start Pages

dawie

Ugh, these are horrible from a user interface standpoint. Sure they look great (and are an interesting experiment) but how will the average person use them? Does the use of these fancy flash pages create value for your website? Only if it's a particularly creative website e.g. bands.

2007-07-17 21:56:36 UTC

thomasswift

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

Typical Maddox, but i kinda agree with "Holds your phone hostage to Apple for new software updates because Apple won't allow everyone to develop applications for it"

2007-07-17 22:09:21 UTC

motoko

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

I like how the "voice of truth" also claims to be a pirate and have balls the size of beanbags.No sarcasm about the voice of truth, though: only Maddox writes obnoxiously enough to be heard over every other idiot nerd fanboy blog.

2007-07-17 22:40:29 UTC

jamesbritt

Rails users: would you use rails again?

menloparkbum

Nitro or Ramaze, as the APIs settle down and the docs beef up.

I've been building web apps ontop of rails for the past year and a half. Now I need to decide if I want to stick with rails for my startup.I like that it is quick to try things out. I don't like the various execution models or scaling issues. I've spent as much or more time tweaking configurations and de-railsifying certain pieces for performace as I have developing the app. I've also used Ruby to replace perl and python for utility scripts, and haven't been impressed with its performance. For those of you in a similar position, would you choose to use rails again?

2007-07-17 22:52:06 UTC

myoung8

Virtualmin - YC startup in Venturebeat

sharpshoot

congrats guys. looks like you're poised for success.

2007-07-18 00:00:03 UTC

brezina

Virtualmin - YC startup in Venturebeat

sharpshoot

Great piece by venture beat, the one liner that started off the piece was perfect. Throwing in the Webmin bit will definitely garner a few phone calls from Sand Hill. Much success to Joe and Jamie!

2007-07-18 00:15:28 UTC

ereldon

Virtualmin - YC startup in Venturebeat

sharpshoot

thanks. got a story? reach me at ereldon@gmail.com. if you've emailed and haven't heard back, could you do so again?

2007-07-18 00:29:38 UTC

thingsilearned

Code Critique as an Interview Tool

nickb

I've had a lot of interviews and never had to do a code critique. Microsoft's had me write some simple reverse strings type things but never critique code. It would think it would work great. Being able to turn some junk into something elegant and functional is a way better skill (for an employer wanting experienced programmers) than knowing the terms and names of methodologies you learn in school.

2007-07-18 00:30:58 UTC

gibsonf1

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

That is one successfully abusive PR masterpiece - The key being that its so over the top that it turns into humour - so you get primitive entertainment while getting some actual information as well. I had no idea about that phone either - and it does look pretty good - especially the cool keyboard and the fact that the screen res is comparable. But, the Iphone UI is a force unto itself.

2007-07-18 01:38:21 UTC

myoung8

A Surprising & Amusing Question: What are you trying to find out about us?

ivankirigin

I forget where I heard about it, but one PG liked a lot was this guy who wrote that he'd devised something algorithmic for wiping after dropping the kids off at the pool. It involved lotion and toilet paper, maybe someone else remembers better.The conclusion I drew was that it really didn't matter what you put, it's not a loaded question. Just tell them something surprising or amusing to YOU, simple as that.

Hi,This is the last question in the Y-Combinator application: "Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)"I like the question, but find it a bit ambiguous as to what you're looking for. Luckily I can ask for an elaboration on this forum.It seems the generality might lead to corny responses. A super-specific anecdote from a sub-genre of geek lore might not be appropriate.I almost want to just tell my favorite Zombie/Pirate/Robot joke.Any thoughts from past applicants? Any thoughts from those that wrote the questions?

2007-07-18 02:00:17 UTC

mdolon

Loopt offers its service to Sprint users

jsjenkins168

Congrats to the Loopt guys!

Unfortunately you need to be signed in the read the rest of the article.

2007-07-18 02:00:47 UTC

nickb

Bay Partners Announces Facebook AppFactory Seed Program

mcxx

They want you to increase the IPO price of Facebook.

2007-07-18 02:57:32 UTC

Alex3917

A Surprising & Amusing Question: What are you trying to find out about us?

ivankirigin

I'm not reading the apps, but if I were then this would be the rough hierarchy of answer goodness:1."What is the most useful new idea you've contributed to humanity?"2. "What is the most useful and counter-intuitive insight you've come across that I'm not already aware of?"3. "What is something especially useful and insightful that I'm not already aware of, even if it's not counter-intuitive?"4. "What piece of new information would most challenge my preconceptions?"5. "What one fact tells me something useful about yourself?"6. "What's an interesting fact?"7. "What's some random thing you pulled out of a science fiction novel or magazine?"8. "What's something about yourself that I'd rather not have known, possibly leading me to throw up in my mouth a little?"

Hi,This is the last question in the Y-Combinator application: "Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)"I like the question, but find it a bit ambiguous as to what you're looking for. Luckily I can ask for an elaboration on this forum.It seems the generality might lead to corny responses. A super-specific anecdote from a sub-genre of geek lore might not be appropriate.I almost want to just tell my favorite Zombie/Pirate/Robot joke.Any thoughts from past applicants? Any thoughts from those that wrote the questions?

2007-07-18 03:00:30 UTC

zeka

Code Critique as an Interview Tool

nickb

National Instruments (Austin, TX) used to do that alot and it worked great. They start with some code critique and then slowly, starting with "how would you re-write this from scratch?" they get you to write some, following by popular "optimize for speed/memory" and so on.I just recently had somewhat similar idea: to reverse tables and ask them to interview me. Not the typical "how do you like it here?" kind, but I want to ask people to ask me technical questions and see what they can come up with.

2007-07-18 03:07:35 UTC

far33d

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

I'm surprised this hasn't been modded out.

2007-07-18 03:47:02 UTC

aaroneous

Google Alerts -- Are you using it to monitor mentions of your startup yet?

staunch

...and mentions of your competition. ...and mentions of your space//industry as well

I've found Google Alerts to be invaluable in monitoring mentions of the projects I work on. If you're not using it yet you probably should be.

2007-07-18 04:06:51 UTC

zeka

Virtualmin - YC startup in Venturebeat

sharpshoot

VA is the most promising startup of all YC companies I've heard of, if you ask me. Under-hyped and over-delivering.

2007-07-18 04:12:24 UTC

acgourley

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

Also the e70 has python. Also I'm still waiting on the way overdue maddox take on web 2.0 which will make uncov look like gigaom.

2007-07-18 06:06:58 UTC

andreyf

Web 2.0 Company Name Generator (actually not bad)

joshwa

zazuk.com it is!

2007-07-18 06:30:28 UTC

SwellJoe

Google Alerts -- Are you using it to monitor mentions of your startup yet?

staunch

Yes. I have dozens of monitors setup. We have a lot of competitors, though I only really pay attention to the top two. But I don't mention any of what I learn to my co-founder (who does most of the core development), because I don't want our product to be driven too much by what competitors do. We have hundreds of customers ourselves...and they probably know what they want as well as anybody.Anyway, it's easy to get side-tracked by outside stuff...so pay attention to your market, but not too much.

I've found Google Alerts to be invaluable in monitoring mentions of the projects I work on. If you're not using it yet you probably should be.

2007-07-18 08:29:34 UTC

thomasswift

Google Alerts -- Are you using it to monitor mentions of your startup yet?

staunch

I set it up after my site was mentioned on Mashable, I really like it.

I've found Google Alerts to be invaluable in monitoring mentions of the projects I work on. If you're not using it yet you probably should be.

2007-07-18 11:34:30 UTC

kingnothing

The iPhone is a piece of shit, and so is your face.

samueladam

I'm surprised this post hasn't been deleted yet.

2007-07-18 11:55:28 UTC

adnam

Web 2.0 Company Name Generator (actually not bad)

joshwa

And the source code is fun too:http://www.dotomator.com/web20.js

2007-07-18 13:29:31 UTC

aston

Evolvist.com, NY startup looking for some great Hackers

mhidalgo

Speaking of which, PG, can we open up the job postings to folks other than YC companies, so long as they embody the spirit?

We have received some small amount of funding to pay some hackers for the rest of the summer to help us build evolvist.com. Evolvist.com wants to be the one stop for green businesses, services, and products. If all goes well co-founder status will be bestowed upon thee. We are looking for someone with great technical skills ( language irrelevant, as many as possible) with an entrepreneurial spirit. Email me at marvin.hidalgo@gmail.com if interested. I can answer questions below.

2007-07-18 14:12:36 UTC

ivankirigin

Code Critique as an Interview Tool

nickb

This seems too small and specific to matter. Sure, it is important to manage what is going on inside a loop iterating a million times. But without a good profiling system to know where to work, this could be wasted effort. And good design of a large system will matter more than any single function or loop.That said, you could do a high level system design and get down into a few details.

2007-07-18 14:13:55 UTC

Goladus

Code Critique as an Interview Tool

nickb

I think this depends on what you are looking for in a candidate. Being able to read code is good, but if you want to hire someone who is really good now and will be 10x better in 6-12 months, you don't want someone who is opinionated and arrogant about what constitutes good code. You'll want someone who recognizes something doesn't look right and then asks why it wasn't done a better way.

2007-07-18 14:44:40 UTC

shabby

Code Critique as an Interview Tool

nickb

I have a similar technique for phone screens. Candidates are told to do the interview where they can receive email. To avoid cheating, we send them a couple of code snippets right as we call them. Then, we talk about the code.We found that phone screeners have a bias toward those who speak well, so we often brought in terrible programmers for a half day of interviews. What a waste, especially when flying people in. The in-person failures we experienced were of the FizzBuzz variety, not the "I don't exactly under stand concurrency" sort.So, we started asking people to read some code and comment on it. Really basic Java stuff: Will this code compile? Trace the flow of execution through this method if the BlahException was thrown. String comparisons with ==. The idea was to see if (1) the person was at all clueful, and (2) if they had actually written Java code. As the linked blogger noted, the disparity in responses is shocking. We found that about half the people we interviewed thought that execution of a Java method ceased once a catch block had been entered. Half! How could they ever have written robust production code? These were often people with years of Java experience on their resumes. I just don't understand how someone could write a bunch of Java code and not understand the basics of how exceptions work.Some other parts of the code review were more nuanced. Most candidates knew that one should not compare strings using double equals, but they usually couldn't explain why. Nor did they understand why == sometimes seems to work when comparing a referenced String object to a literal. We were happy to hire smart candidates that hadn't done a lot of Java work, but we wanted to avoid people who had supposedly spent years with a language and didn't even comprehend the basics.

2007-07-18 15:00:38 UTC

Tichy

Possession of Social Capital With Intent to Distribute

Alex3917

"This makes her socially obligated to reciprocate."Apparently you haven't used online dating services very much ;-)

2007-07-18 15:01:47 UTC

epi0Bauqu

Looking for a Co-Founder (Boston area)

pbnaidu

MIT has an entrepreneur club: http://web.mit.edu/e-club/You can also meet people through the MIT 100K competition: http://www.mit100k.org/They both will get going more in the fall.

Hi,I am developing a travel related Web2.0 web site and looking for a co-founder with programming skills in Java[Spring MVC, Hibernate, AJAX(*), etc] and/or Ruby On Rails. I am also interested in advisers with experience in travel industry.Any pointers to networking in Boston area especially for tech startups would be greatly appreciated.If you're interested please send me an email to pbnaidu@gmail.com.Thanks.

2007-07-18 16:32:27 UTC

nickb

Loopt offers its service to Sprint users

jsjenkins168

Congrats! I'm not a fan of apps like that and would never use it but I can see why someoene else might.

Unfortunately you need to be signed in the read the rest of the article.

2007-07-18 17:07:41 UTC

ivankirigin

Does the Google policy of allowing dogs at work offend Muslims? Does Google have dog-free zones?

amichail

Generally, I believe people have the right to be offended by anything and voice their opinions about it. Because it can be for anything, people shouldn't have the right to force change. This should be as much company policy as the law allows.Also, I love dogs. They're so cute! http://mfrost.typepad.com/cute_overload/pups/index.htmlThere is a funny story related to this. My company has a tiny branch on the other side of the country. Essentially an elite group of engineers wanted more sun, and started a skunk-works. After paying tens of thousands of dollars for a video-conference system, it wasn't used often. This is because a golden retriever would be the only one on the small office side. He'd come after hearing the system start and would sit in front of the camera. The owner was off doing real work.

I'm curious about this. It seems that such a policy would not create a friendly work environment for Muslims.While I'm not Muslim, I would not like to work around dogs or most other pets for that matter (although I would be ok with a fish tank).

2007-07-18 17:10:33 UTC

eposts

The Equity Equation

rams

Was this article written in response to Seth Levines comment? What Seth Levine doesn't know or doesn't want to tell is that a lot of YC alums could raise the 5K/founder on their own, so money is NOT the primary reason they are there.

2007-07-18 17:27:48 UTC

joshwa

Why not to get funded. Markus Frind speaks.

mmaunder

linkjacked. original: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30536

2007-07-18 17:45:19 UTC

dfranke

The Case for case sensitivity

benhoyt

I'd take this a step further and say that syntactically-significant case, a la Haskell, is a good idea. You already use case to disambiguate to human readers, so why should the compiler be oblivious to the distinction?

2007-07-18 18:17:25 UTC

cperciva

The Equity Equation

rams

Nice article, but drastically oversimplified. Paul ignores two critical issues: Risk, and non-linear utility-of-money functions. These two factors become critical when there is a tradeoff between probability of success and the payoff of success.Suppose, as a simple example, that I have a startup which I think has a 50% chance of succeeding and being sold for $1M, and a 50% chance of failing and being worthless. Now suppose that Paul selects me to participate in YC, but wants 10% of the company, and I think his help will leave the potential valuation unchanged but increase the chance of success from 50% to 55%. If I accept his offer, my EXPECTED return drops from $500k (50% of $1M) to $495k (55% of $900k) -- but I'd still accept the offer, because increasing my chance of getting that first $900k is worth far more than getting an additional $100k on top of that.On the other hand, suppose a venture capital company comes along and offers to help me expand into a much larger market, where I'd have a 10% chance of the company being worth $100M (and a 90% chance of the company being worthless), in exchange for taking 50% of the company stock. If I accept the offer, my EXPECTED return jumps from $500k to $5M (10% of $50M) -- but there's no way that I'd accept the offer, because I really don't want to spend years of my life on something which has a 90% chance of being worthless.It's important to understand the numbers, but in the end the numbers, at best, have to guide you rather than making decisions for you.

2007-07-18 18:26:13 UTC

dawie

The Equity Equation

rams

Paul, I really liked your article and I have always wondered about working out these financial details. Its cool how you did it for employees. I liked the fact that you kept it simple.

2007-07-18 18:36:10 UTC

ivankirigin

The Equity Equation

rams

Even in a simple model, time should be incorporated, right? The total cost for the life of the company of an employee is included, assuming a particular growth rate. What about for investment? "the total cost of this round of funding" doesn't make sense so much. And surely the rate of increased value of your company matters.Also, it seems, like you note in the end, that there is still a gut feeling, and here it is stated simply: how can you predict how much your company will grow because of an investment?This is easier if you have sales numbers that show some trend, where investing $N in business development yields X more users leading to Y more profit. If you're reddit, and you haven't even monetized your users before being purchased, this can be harder. Also organic growth implies less direct business development.One simple question that I think has a standard/GAAP answer: how much is your company worth if you are making $X yearly and growing at a rate of Y%? I vaguely recall terms like "good-will estimates" and "present value of future money" in the single management class I've taken years ago. But is there something standard for a company going through valuation for acquisition or taking a next round of funding. [Ignore for the moment that a company making a nice profit and growing ideally wouldn't need a next round of funding.]

2007-07-18 18:52:13 UTC

johnrob

The Equity Equation

rams

A smart company would give 6% equity to YC just for the advice and publicity. The cash is the least valuable part of the equation. 5k per person can be saved up in a number of months, even for relatively low salaries if you are stingy.

2007-07-18 18:52:47 UTC

nostrademons

Saving server costs with Javascript

mmaunder

It's less of a benefit than you might think, because most websites are not CPU-bound. The bottleneck tends to be disk seeks, particularly if you use a database. You can't move I/O to your visitor's machines because you don't have access to their disks.Perhaps it'd be more useful for sites like Mailinator or news.YC that keep everything in memory, but sites like that usually don't have performance problems anyway. And bandwidth typically becomes a bottleneck if you try to use a distributed memory cache over consumer Internet connections.It'd be really useful for websites with heavy algorithmics, but how many websites like that do you know? I work in the financial sector, and even there this isn't feasible, because the data needed totals about 50 GB/day and there's no way in hell you can transfer that over a dialup modem.

...because most of the execution happens inside the browser and uses our visitors CPU and memory, I don't have to worry about my servers having to provide that CPU and memory...

2007-07-18 18:58:04 UTC

brett

YC's Inkling Markets Powering Crowd Wisdom and the Future of Newsgathering in ABC7's "Futures Market"

staunch

ABC7 is pushing this pretty hard. Every time I see one of their news shows (which is not very often) there is an ad for their futures market or they are quoting futures market results. There's never any mention of Inkling which is probably a good thing. The more I think about white labeling the more I like it. Empower and incentivize a first tier of users to attract additional users on their own. It especially makes sense in the context of webapps where it's relatively easy to do.

2007-07-18 19:00:05 UTC